Posted on 06/07/2010 12:44:05 PM PDT by Errant
Jun 2010 - The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, the largest extinction in history, could have been caused by huge, worldwide methane explosions, says Dr. Gregory Ryskin, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University
Could such explosions have created the Carolina Bays? (More than two million huge holes were gouged into the ground about 12,000 years ago at the Gothenburg magnetic reversal. Some of the holes - which are still there - are bigger than nearby cities. Those holes are now collectively known as the Carolina Bays.)
During the Great Permian Extinction, when up to 95% of all species went extinct, Dr. Ryskin proposes that huge - and I mean huge - methane bubbles rose out of the ocean creating methane-bearing water clouds.
CO2 is twice as heavy as air, says professor George Kling, a biogeochemist at the University of Michigan. The clouds therefore wouldn't have risen very high. (You can make methane from CO2.)
These prehistoric methane-bearing clouds then circled the entire earth in a layer as much as 50 meters thick, ready to ignite as soon as they met any random spark.
This would have provided "an incredible explosive force 10,000 times greater than the entire nuclear stockpile available at this time," says Ryskin.
When I first watched this video, it was tantalizing to think that methane explosions such as these could have blasted those millions of holes into the ground that we now call the Carolina Bays.
However, I'm still not convinced. I'll stick with my theory that the holes were blasted into the ground as a result of the Gothenburg magnetic reversal.
Besides, methane explosions wouldn't explain why all of the bays are elliptical.
Just as an aside,if CO2 is twice as heavy as air, then how in the world does it float around up there high in the sky, creating "global warming?"
Otherwise known as "Taco Tuesdays"
So the dinosaurs became extinct because they lit their farts? Who knew.
But methane is not. It is lighter than air and an accumulation of it in a cloud would be far above the surface.
/mark
*ping*
Bush’s Fault!
GW PING
Interesting to consider. Seems like lightening would occur somewhere before there was enough built up to cause the kind of event described.
I don’t know if Methane cause the Carolina Bays, but I have seen a causal relationship between methane and skid marks.
It is however much easier to make CO2 from methane (CH4)
An exothermic reaction which cooks a great deal of food in this country every day.
CH4 + 2(O2) = CO2 + 2(H2O)
Making Methane from CO2 would be an endothermic reaction and therefore unlikely in nature.
Couldn't possibly have been caused by huge rocks hitting the surface from an angled flight path???
Methane MW (molecular weight) 16
Air avg MW 29
Carbon Dioxide MW 44
Under standard conditions (1 atm, ~20 Celsius), ideal gas rules are good approximation so 1 mole volume (22.3 liters) weighs the molecular weight in grams.
What probably gave him the idea is that there are enormous methane ice fields under some of the northern latitude sea beds, that are believed to erupt under some circumstances, blowing vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
However, as enormous as these can be, they don’t seem to have the same character as the Carolina bays.
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=301
Do people get paid to be so dumb?
Those formations are the result of prevailing winds and freeze thaw cycles in permafrost lowlands.
Just check out the northern coast of Alaska.
The above theory courtesy Google maps, and FIVE MINUTES OF REFLECTION.
Xenu's fault.
Looks like a fishing expedition for stimulus money to me.
If that theory had drawn a bigger grant, that would be the story.
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